Thinking about Systems

Transformation Maps, a new platform developed by the World Economic Forum is a completely different sort of visualization, one that I’ve never seen before. The Swiss nonprofit calls it a "dynamic knowledge tool," and it charts the interactions between dozens of industries, countries, and issues that shape the world. Climate change is on there. 3D printing is, too. Social media, global governance, gender parity, cybersecurity, space, China—these and more than 100 other "insight areas" form the nodes in a responsive web of interconnections.

"Think the Cold War is over? It may be, but its effects still cast a long shadow over society.

"Systems thinking offered a means of conceptualising and understanding a world that had grown hugely more complex and dangerous. Nuclear weapons demanded radical new ways of thinking about time, scale, power, death, responsibility and, most of all, control – control of technology, people, information and ideas."

Be wary of the national security generalist.